Pac-12 Gives Oklahoma the Cold Shoulder

By Tim Taliaferro in Sports on September 10, 2011 at 2:28 pm | 1 Comment

The Pac-12 has told Oklahoma and Oklahoma State that it is not interested in adding any teams at the moment, Orangebloods’ Chip Brown is reporting.

It’s bad news (maybe) for the Sooners and the Cowboys, who were exploring other options besides the Big 12, and good news (maybe) for Texas, who has been trying its darndest to hold the Big 12 together. Scott apparently told the schools Thursday that any possible expansion won’t happen soon.

“We haven’t spent one minute thinking about going further, that’s not our desire,” Scott told reporters yesterday. “It’s when all this discussion started happening in the Big 12 and it seems like the SEC is going to go beyond 12 and teams started approaching, let’s take a step back and look at the future—if the landscape is going to change.”

For the foreseeable future, it looks like the Big 12 will stay alive. Texas A&M’s bid to move to the SEC has hit a snag, with Baylor University threatening to sue the Aggies if they leave. Now that the most likely option for Oklahoma and Oklahoma State appears to be no longer an imminent possibility, the conference realignment dance appears to have stopped—for now.

Orangebloods also reported yesterday that Texas was open to a new revenue-sharing agreement that would evenly split its tier 1 TV money across the conference. A spokesman for UT Athletics could not immediately be reached to confirm that.

File photo by Tim Taliaferro.

Tags: Big 12, conference realignment, oklahoma, oklahoma state, pac-12, sec